Forbidden by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

leaving it tousled and tumbling forward across his forehead. His rugged face was weathered from the sun, with deep wrinkles etched alongside his odd-colored eyes. His eyes
should
have been the warmest shade of deep brown, not this zero-degree grayish-blue.
    Kayla searched his face for any similarity to Liam. Cal’s slightly hooked nose was different, as were his exotically wide cheekbones. Everything about him was different—the shape of his face, the color of his hair, the strength of his chin.
    His mouth. There was something about his mouth that proclaimed the two men brothers. Maybe.
    Kayla realized he was waiting for her to continue speaking, but she’d long since lost her train of thought. “Liam didn’t—
doesn’t
—look very much like you.”
    “We had different mothers.”
    Liam had told her that. Cal’s mother was part Native American—from the Crow tribe, Liam had said. Her heritage was evident in Cal’s height and darkly handsome face. She also knew that his mother had died when Cal was five. Both brothers had that in common—although Cal hadn’t had an older brother to care for him.
    But Liam hadn’t told her that he and his older brother were as different as night and day. Liam was loquacious. He was charming and charismatic and sparkling with good humor. He was a relentless talker, filling any silences with stories and opinions and snatches of song.
    Cal, on the other hand, didn’t speak unless he absolutely had to. Even then he was terse and to the point.
    Kayla gave him a tentative smile. “Your mother was the talkative one, right?”
    She saw it. A flash of genuine amusement in his eyes. It was a smile, even though it didn’t quite reach his lips.
    “I figure if you know Liam as well as you claim to, considering the way the kid could talk, you know all there is to know about me.”
    Kayla
did
know quite a bit. She knew that Cal had dropped out of high school the day he turned sixteen in order to run the ranch and provide for his little brother. She knew that there were many relentless, grueling hours involved in being a working rancher. She knew he’d given Liam everything he’d ever asked for. She knew he’d held Liam’s undying loyalty and deep-flowing brotherly love.
    “I know only what Liam knew,” she said. “I think there’s probably a whole lot more you never told him.”
    There was the faintest flicker in Cal’s eyes, but he looked away before she could tell whether or not she had imagined it.
    “You know about me, but I don’t really know you at all,” he said. “Where’d you grow up? Are you from Boston?”
    “Boston suburbs,” she said. “Let’s see, my childhood in a nutshell: No sisters, one brother—older than me by five years, a dog named George—younger than me by five years. Dad worked in middle management at an insurance company in the city, and Mom stayed at home, did volunteer work at the church. I had a classic American sitcom upbringing—without the cheesy laugh track. Every episode had a happy ending. I graduated from high school and went to Boston University—English major, Spanish minor. I was going for my teaching degree.”
    He was watching her steadily, as if well aware that all of her information had been superficial. “But now you’re a social worker. What made you switch from teaching?”
    Kayla gazed back at him, wondering how vague she should make her reply. Something in his pale blue eyes dared her to tell him,
really
tell him something personal about herself, tell him who she was.
    So she told him. Bluntly. No apologies, no gentle words of warning to soften the truth. “I was raped.”
    She could see disbelief flash into his eyes, followed quickly by the realization that she was dead serious. He didn’t try to hide his shock and his horror, and he didn’t look away in embarrassment the way some people did, as if her admission were something of which to be ashamed.
    So she told him even more. “Sophomore year of college. I went